A Small Thing You May Wish to Know About My Upcoming Novel

It’s mentioned here in this announcement in the September ’11 issue of Locus:

And now you know. Well, you and a couple of thousand other people, all of whom showed up to my readings over the last several months and swore secrecy about the title until I and Tor released it. And you know what was awesome? Almost without exception, people held themselves to that oath. I think it says something fairly incredible about science fiction fandom that you can ask a couple of thousand people to keep a secret, and they will. Thanks, folks.

I tried to pitch that idea to Jon Ordover back in the 1990s, but he told me that Paramount wanted to get rid of the Wesley Crusher character all together, and that the rough-and-tumble grittiness of that kind of story would be at odds with the Socialist Utopian ideals the Paramount executives. Pity. I had a great little plot about Wes discovering his dead dad’s undercover secret identity as “Black” Jack Crusher, a smuggler, and how it was at odds with his Boy Scout image. Oh, well.

On a bus tour of Boston, we were told by the guide: “during the Revolutionary war, the british soldiers wore a uniform with bright red coats, so that blood wouldnt show. For much the same reason, the american soldiers wore brown trousers.

Re: Secrecy, oddly enough I seem to recall hearing that title some point in the past during a con-recording of you that you posted a link to. The actual reading was removed from the audio clip, but I could have sworn I heard you remark “the neat thing about Redshirts is…” about 10 seconds after the clipped portion. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I wonder if that slipped through by accident.

I was one of those in the audience at the Beaverton Powell’s back in May and was hoping that this would be the title. It simply works so well. FWIW, I think Wil Wheaton’s comment above would indeed make an awesome jacket blurb.

Congrats again on getting another novel published. It’s a very intriguing title, and I’m sure there is going to be some pretty big humour/parody/homage to old school Star Trek. Probably a few people who don’t live to the end of the novel, all because they liked to wear red.

Alas, not even Tor would have the amazeballs to use a blurb that included the word “FUCKING”. Especially not entirely capitalized, as it probably should be in this context.

If they do use Wil’s blurb, I hereby pledge $100 to Scalzi’s favorite charity. It must at minimum include “FUCKING AMAZEBALLS HILARIOUS AND AWESOME”. I’ll be generous and give full credit even if they tuck it inside instead of putting it on the cover where it belongs.

sffgeek @46: Not to worry. If it sells well (and why wouldn’t it? I mean, it’s John Fuckin’ Scalzi!!) Tor will no doubt pressure him do a sequel, with three or four more codas. I could be wrong, but I think OMW was a “standalone” until it sold a metric buttload of copies. ;-)

There is a Celebrity Author who is well-known to live in a big old house outside the Twin Cities. This is so well known that one verse of a filk song about his big annual party describes the drive there in detail.
This author’s fans include some you really don’t want having your home address. And to my dumbfoundment, I have never heard of this sensitive information getting into wrong hands.
Fandom’s stewarding of Genuinely Sensitive Information astonishes me.

Wil said “I’m glad you chose this particular title”, and several other people said similar things. I assumed that the “Redshirts” part of the title drove the rest of the book, and the rest was just hard work and creativity to find out what the characters were going to do with it, rather than the book getting off to an untitled start and acquiring the name later. And yeah, the reading at Worldcon was loads of fun, and I haven’t leaked the title (/throws hand sign), though I’d actually heard it when it had briefly escaped earlier in the year.

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